legacies from the men in my life

And I don’t mean money. I mean culture, understood in the widest sense.

Whatever about the men, intimacy with them put me in touch with a wide variety of microcultures.

I wonder what legacies, if any, they have from me.

* * *

from my first husband
Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Mozart opera; some sense of how a genius thinks (he was — still is, I suppose — a genius); an understanding of what it was like to grow up Catholic in the U.S. in the 1950s; some sense of what ‘Canadian’ means; a visionary notion of political activism
(he was passionate about Native American education; against the then corrupt miltary regime in Chile; against capital punishment, etc.)

from my second husband
how to cook rice, except I don’t do it much any more; ditto pasta; how to make salad dressing from oil & vinegar, though now I add mustard (the real thing, not mustard powder) and lemon & like it much better that way; the superiority of red wine to white, except I almost never drink wine, and sometimes I prefer white; the superiority of romaine lettuce to all others, except I’m really tired of it and mix it with other lettuces when I’m making a salad for company; how to cross-country ski, except I haven’t done it in years; a taste for Barbara Pym — now there’s something. I’ve read more of her than he has. She’s terrific.

from rolly
Central Park; Faje yogurt; it’s okay to like the Everly brothers; the term ‘near miss’ for a certain kind of failed romantic relationship; a close-up view of claustrophobia…

from performer
the information that tupperware can be microwaved; confirmation of my dislike of stringed instruments, especially when unaccompanied by any other kind of instrument; and from his friends C & G (who said I was the only woman they ever saw him with who wasn’t depressed and therefore the only one of his many women ‘you could actually talk with’) : Equal Exchange coffee beans
[update - addition -- exclude the banjo from that second category. i love the banjo, especially banjo duets or trios; but i don't think Performer ever came within a mile of a banjo. so to be precise: the kind of stringed instruments you would find in a conventional orchestra! okay? would never want to disparage the banjo. 'nuff said.]

and most recently…

from plan c
‘you whistle when you’re happy’ (his observation about me); dancing (salsa, his version; the merengue, his version; and lots of lively, funny, charming unnameable steps he invented); I never heard of Cash Cab till Plan C told me about it and we watched it (he loves it…); a vague understanding of Billy Joel’s importance in the world; knowledge of, if not great love for, the Righteous Brothers; an understanding of why many people love Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”; a more detailed knowledge than I ever expected to have of the socio-politcal background of XXX, the area where Plan C lives — perhaps I should just say, the geopolitics of an area of the East Coast I hitherto had very little interest in; greater appreciation of artichokes, or at least an understanding of the love of artichokes; manicures & pedicures; the art of folding

* * *

photo credit: fogcity.blogs.com

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